Sri Lanka Tamil Refugees Humanitarian Programme coordinator Eashvara Lingam said the group would go on strike unless the Malaysian government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) fulfill their demands to be sent to a third country without further delay.

“They also demand for them not to be forcibly sent back to Sri Lanka where they will face persecution by its army and for authorities to permit human rights activists and other NGO leaders to visit them in the camps,” he said in a statement here on Tuesday.

Eashvara said he had also received reports from the detainees that they were not getting clean water, and supplied with only low quality and stale food.

“However, they appreciate the Malaysian authorities for saving them from the sea,” he said.

Banners flown by single engine aircraft displaying “Stop Tamil Genocide; Boycott Sri Lanka” circled the cricket grounds several times during a 20-over cricket tournament held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida during this weekend, attendees to the games said.

Stop Tamil Genocide - Boycott Sri Lanka

Indian, Pakistani, English, South African, Sri Lankan and Caribbean supporters dominated the attendees at the stadium. In the meantime Sinhalese dissidents opposed to the Rajapaksa regime flew their own message on another plane which said: Sri Lanka – Free Gen Fonseka – Restore Democracy.”

New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori felt the event had been a success. “Obviously with a lot of Sri Lankans here it had a kind of sub-continent feel but it was a crowd that was entertained,” Reuters report quoted Vettori as saying.

“I thought the entertainment off the field was good for the game and whilst it wasn’t as high scoring as people wanted it was still a thrilling game,” Vettori added.

New Zealand made 120 and Sri Lanka stumbled to 92 all out with two balls remaining on the Saturday game.

New evidence of wartime abuses by Sri Lankan government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the armed conflict that ended one year ago demonstrates the need for an independent international investigation into violations of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.

New evidence of wartime abuses by Sri Lankan government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the armed conflict that ended one year ago demonstrates the need for an independent international investigation into violations of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. Recently Human Rights Watch research gathered photographic evidence and accounts by witnesses of atrocities by both sides during the final months of fighting.

Last week, the government created a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission with a mandate to examine the failure of the 2002 ceasefire and the “sequence of events” thereafter. It is not empowered to investigate allegations of violations of the laws of war such as those documented by Human Rights Watch.

“Yet another feckless commission is a grossly inadequate response to the numerous credible allegations of war crimes,” said Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Damning new evidence of abuses shows why the UN should not let Sri Lanka sweep these abuses under the carpet.”

Human Rights Watch called on Secretary-General Ban to promptly establish an international investigation to examine allegations of wartime abuse by both sides to the conflict.

New Evidence of Wartime Violations
Human Rights Watch has examined more than 200 photos taken on the front lines in early 2009 by a soldier from the Sri Lankan Air Mobile Brigade. Among these are a series of five photos showing a man who appears to have been captured by the Sri Lankan army. An independent source identified the man by name and told Human Rights Watch that he was a long-term member of the LTTE’s political wing from Jaffna.

The first two photos show the man alive, with blood on his face and torso, tied to a palm tree. He is surrounded by several men wearing military fatigues, one brandishing a knife close to his face. In the next three photos, the man is lying – apparently dead – against a rock. His head is being held up, he is partly covered in the flag of Tamil Eelam, and there is more blood on his face and upper body.

A forensic expert who reviewed the photos told Human Rights Watch that the latter three photos show material on the man’s neck consistent in color with brain matter, “which would indicate an injury to the back of his head, as nothing is visible which would cause this on his face. This would indicate severe trauma to the back of the head consistent with something like a gunshot wound or massive blows to the back of the head with something such as a machete or ax.”

While Human Rights Watch cannot conclusively determine that the man was summarily executed in custody, the available evidence indicates that a full investigation is warranted.

Several of the photos also show what appear to be dead women in LTTE uniforms with their shirts pulled up and their pants pulled down, raising concerns that they might have been sexually abused or their corpses mutilated. Again, such evidence is not conclusive but shows the need for an investigation.

The new accounts by witnesses described indiscriminate shelling of large gatherings of civilians during the last weeks of fighting, apparently by government forces. In addition to an incident on April 8, 2009, previously reported, witnesses told Human Rights Watch about three other incidents in late April and early May 2009 of government forces shelling civilians, mainly women and children, who were standing in food distribution lines. The witnesses also described LTTE recruitment of children and LTTE attacks on civilians attempting to escape the war zone.

And a senior Sri Lankan army commander said: “Definitely, the order would have been to kill everybody and finish them off.

“I don’t think we wanted to keep any hardcore elements, so they were done away with. It is clear that such orders were, in fact, received from the top.”

Despite allegations of war crimes, Sri Lanka’s government has managed to avoid an independent inquiry. But the evidence continues to mount.

‘Body blows to humanitarian law’
So decisive was Sri Lanka’s victory over the Tamil Tigers last year that other nations facing violent insurgencies are now citing the “Sri Lanka option” as a model for crushing rebellion, writes Channel 4 News foreign reporter Jonathan Miller.

International lawyers, human rights and conflict prevention groups are alarmed, accusing the Colombo government of riding roughshod over international law.

Last night Louise Arbour, a former chief prosecutor in international war crimes trials, told an audience at Chatham House – the foreign policy think tank – that “the [Sri Lankan] government’s refusal to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants” and the “sheer magnitude of civilian death and suffering” dealt what she called “the most serious of body blows to international humanitarian law”.

The Sri Lankan government has repeatedly rejected the charges of civilian deaths as grossly exaggerated and has denied that any of its security forces have committed war crimes or violated international humanitarian law.

Ms Arbour appeared live on Channel 4 News to outline options available to the international community to prevent the “Sri Lanka option” gaining currency. A new ICG report entitled War Crimes in Sri Lanka defines this option as “unrestrained military action, refusal to negotiate, disregard for humanitarian issues, keeping out international observers including press and humanitarian workers”.

Ms Arbour also responded to dramatic new evidence contained in a film broadcast by Channel 4 News. The fresh evidence, detailing extremely serious allegations of possible war crimes, has been gathered in an extended undercover investigation in Sri Lanka. Testimony from soldiers interviewed by Channel 4 News corroborates persistent allegations aired by this programme since the end of the war a year ago.

Chief among these: the accusation that Sri Lankan soldiers were responsible for extrajudicial executions – as graphically illustrated by the disturbing video we aired last August. The video – long dismissed as a fake by the government in Colombo – was authenticated by the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions in January this year.

The clamour from international rights groups for an impartial investigation into alleged atrocities contrasts sharply with the failure of the UN to demand accountability from the Sri Lankan government. Last year, the Sri Lankan president promised the UN Secretary General that he would look into the question of accountability.

On Monday President Mahinda Rajapaksa named an eight-member panel to glean lessons learned from the war. But members of the group say they have no legal power to investigate alleged abuses. “If this is ‘it’,” Louise Arbour said last night, “there’s no reason to expect from the government’s past record that it’s got any intention to investigate or put in place an appropriate accountability mechanism.”

The UN Human Rights Council seems to provide little hope of investigating war crimes, having congratulated the Sri Lankan government on its victory, within days of the war ending.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council holds out no hope at all. The Sri Lankan issue has failed to force its way onto the UNSC agenda – and were it to do so, China and Russia would likely stand in the way of any unlikely referral to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

The secretary general has also so far failed to appoint international experts to investigate – as he’s previously promised he might.

Amnesty and the ICG have taken the UN to task for its failure to act decisively to push for accountability. Crisis Group went so far as to recommend that the UN should open an inquiry into its own conduct in Sri Lanka. Last night Louise Arbour – herself a former UN human rights commissioner – talked of the UN’s “silence – verging on complicity” with the Rajapaksa regime.

A statement from the Sri Lankan high commission
The High Commission of Sri Lanka in the United Kingdom totally deny the allegations made against the Government of Sri Lanka and its armed forces. As it has been repeatedly stressed and supported by evidence, Government’s security forces were engaged in a humanitarian operation with the objective of rescuing the civilians held as human shields by a terrorist outfit: the LTTE, which was banned in many countries including the UK. All internationally accepted standards and norms of such operations were followed in the prosecution of the humanitarian operation by the security forces which were under strict orders to follow a zero civilian casualty policy.

The government of Sri Lanka is now in the process of rebuilding and reconciliation. The President of Sri Lanka has established the “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” of eight eminent persons reflecting all ethnic groups in Sri Lanka to inquire and report institutional administrative and legislative measures which need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation among all communities.

This High Commission is not in a position to make comments on specific allegations said to have been made in the video without viewing it. Therefore, we appreciate it if you could forward the said video to the High Commission for viewing and for verifying its authenticity prior to the telecast.

High Commission of Sri Lanka
The United Kingdom
18 May 2010

In January 2009, as the final chapter opened in the 30-year-long Sri Lankan civil war, I was in Gaza, picking over the humanitarian disaster left after Israel’s three-week war there. Between 1,200 and 1,400 civilians were killed during the aerial bombardments and subsequent ground offensive. In the final weeks of the Sri Lankan government offensive on the “no-fire zone”, Ms Arbour believes a figure of 30,000 civilian deaths “is not implausible”.

Within months of the Gaza conflict, the UN Human Rights Council had dispatched Judge Richard Goldstone to investigate possible war crimes. He produced a damning report.

There has been no investigation in Sri Lanka. Local journalists who’ve raised their heads above the parapet have been jailed or disappeared or killed. The UN has done nothing concrete in moving towards an impartial inquiry. There has been no Goldstone in Colombo. Even the UN rapporteur for extrajudicial executions has been denied a visa for the past four years.

Mr Rajapaksa himself, besides being president, is minister of defence, finance and planning, ports and aviation, and highways. In all, he is directly responsible for 78 institutions. One, the defence ministry, is a condominium with his brother, Gotabaya, the defence secretary. Besides control of the armed forces, police and coast guard, it has expanded its remit to take in immigration and emigration, as well as, curiously, the Urban Development Authority and the Land Reclamation and Development Corporation.

SL War Crimes: Govt intentionally violated the law by attacking civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations

[ Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 01:56.52 AM GMT +05:30 ]

Evidence gathered by International Crisis Group (ICG) provides reasonable grounds to believe that government security forces repeatedly and intentionally violated the law by attacking civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations, says the report released yesterday by ICG.

The report concludes that the newly revealed evidence of war crimes in Sri Lanka last year makes an international inquiry essential. “The international community has a responsibility to uphold the rule of law, the reputation of international agencies and respect for international humanitarian law, most importantly the protection of civilians lives. Many countries facilitated or permitted the conditions under which these alleged crimes were committed. They did little to speak out against them and even less to prevent them. Even at this late stage, they have a responsibility to press for investigations and prosecutions as an integral part of their efforts to support the people of Sri Lanka in rebuilding their country,” the report said in its conclusion.

The ICG media release said: War Crimes in Sri Lanka , the latest report from the International Crisis Group, exposes repeated violations of international law by both the Sri Lankan security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the last five months of their 30-year civil war. That evidence suggests that the period of January to May 2009 saw tens of thousands of Tamil civilian men, women, children and the elderly killed, countless more wounded, and hundreds of thousands deprived of adequate food and medical care, resulting in more deaths.

Released on the eve of the first anniversary of the end of the fighting, the report calls for an international inquiry into alleged crimes. The government has conclusively demonstrated its unwillingness to undertake genuine investigations of security force abuses and continues to deny any responsibility for civilian casualties. A true accounting is needed to address the grievances that drive conflict in Sri Lanka, so the international community must take the lead. “The scale of civilian deaths and suffering demands a response”, says Crisis Group President Louise Arbour. “Future generations will demand to know what happened, and future peace in Sri Lanka requires some measure of justice.”

Both sides in Sri Lanka’s civil war violated international humanitarian law throughout the decades-long conflict. However the violations became particularly frequent and deadly in the months leading to the government’s declaration of victory over the LTTE in May 2009. Evidence gathered by Crisis Group provides reasonable grounds to believe that government security forces repeatedly and intentionally violated the law by attacking civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations. The government declined to respond to Crisis Group’s request for comment on these allegations. Evidence also shows that the LTTE violated the law by killing, wounding or otherwise endangering civilians, including by shooting them and preventing them from leaving the conflict zone even when injured and dying.

Much of the international community turned a blind eye to the violations when they were happening. Many countries welcomed the LTTE’s defeat regardless of the cost of immense civilian suffering and an acute challenge to the laws of war. The United Nations too readily complied with the government’s demands to withdraw from conflict areas. The international community has a responsibility to uphold the rule of law, the reputation of international agencies and respect for international humanitarian law, most importantly the protection of civilians lives. Today, a number of other countries are considering “the Sri Lankan option” – unrestrained military action, refusal to negotiate, disregard for humanitarian issues, keeping out international observers including the press and humanitarian workers – as a way to deal with insurgencies and other violent groups.

“An international inquiry is necessary not only for justice and long-term peace in Sri Lanka but also to help prevent a repeat elsewhere”, says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. “It would serve as a warning to other governments that may be considering ‘the Sri Lankan model’ to address their own internal conflicts.”